How to Use Your WiiMote and Nunchuck as a Mouse!

[BingoFishy]

Please bear with me, as this is my first guide. Feel free to give me constructive criticism.

Hello all! Today I'm going to show you how to

USE YOUR WIIMOTE AND NUNCHUCK AS YOUR MOUSE (and keyboard, too!)

Actually you can use pretty much any controller. Non-nintendo controllers don't even need the first download.

 

First and foremost:

This is NOT a guide on how to make it so you can wave your WiiMote around and have it move the mouse on the screen. If you want to do that, there's an instructibles here and a How-to-geek guide here. You can also use a different custom driver found in the first link under "What do I need?". I've found the GlovePIE method quite finicky (doesn't work all the time), but YMMV. This is a guide on how to use the joystick (or whatever buttons you like) as your mouse and/or keyboard. I've found that there is little to no perceptible input latency.

 

This is a guide for Windows 8.1 and 10 only. However, I'm guessing it won't be hard to figure out what to do for Windows 7 based on this.

Why would you want to do this?

The WiiMote and Nunchuck are significantly more ergonomic that any mouse, and most controllers. Unlike the latter two, you can wrap your hand all the way around a WiiMote or joystick which I find very comfortable. You can also control your computer across the room, but without needing a surface like you would for a wireless mouse. Finally, it looks really cool and you can show it off to your friends.

What do I need?

You will need four things:
1) A custom WiiMote driver made by Julian Löhr. You can download this here (download gamepad).                                                      

2) A software called JoyToKey. You can download it here.                                                                                                                         
3) A WiiMote                                                                                                                                                                                                

4) Bluetooth                                                                                                                                                                                                 

          5) Nunchuck (recommended)                                                                                                                                                                                
 

Step 1:

Download the driver. Once the driver is downloaded, unzip it and run TinyInstaller.exe. The author of the driver unfortunately does not have a Code Signing Certificate yet, so you'll need to disable

Driver Signature Verification before connecting your WiiMote. If you don't know how to do this, How-To-Geek made a handy guide you can use here. 

 

Step 2:

Once you've disabled Driver Signature Verification and restarted, connect your WiiMote. To do this, open up Bluetooth in System Settings → Devices → Bluetooth. For newer WiiMotes, you will need to connect to your computer using the button on the back (possible under the battery cover). However, for old WiiMotes without MotionPlus built in, you can just hold down ➀ and ➁. You should see something like Nintendo RVL-CNT-01 Show up. -TR will be added to the end of it if you're using a newer WiiMote. Click [Pair] or [Connect]. A popup dialog will show, asking for a password. Fortunately, you can just click Next without inputting a password. After this, you may see the word Connecting... following some spinning dots. I find that you can just click [Cancel] and the remote will still connect. After clicking cancel, a bar will appear under the WiiMote, and you can let it finish "loading." To check to see if the WiiMote was connected successfully, press the Windows button, and search USB. Click "Set Up USB Game Controllers." Your WiiMote should be listed there.

 

Step 3:

Here's the fun part! Run JoyToKey, and press a button on your controller. The button you press will be highlighted in yellow in the program, so you know what button corresponds to what. You can easily double-click the desired button you want to change and set it to what you want it to do. I have made my own configuration for normal mouse use, as well as for the game Portal 2. The downloads will be listed at the bottom.

 

Limitations:

-You CAN use this without JoyToKey - however, I have not been able to get it to work with Steam Big Picture Mode or Portal 2.

-According to the JoyToKey website, it won't work with some programs

Known issues:

...Copied from Julian Loehr's webpage, with a couple edits

-When powering off the Wii Remote or moving out of the Bluetooth range, Windows won’t recognize the Wii Remote is gone. Manually remove the remote in the Bluetooth settings.

-When shutting down Windows, the Wii Remote Device won’t be ejected and is still present on next start up. Manually remove the remote in the Bluetooth settings.

-When using other Bluetooth devices, they may stop working, until the Wii Remote is disconnected.

-Other Programs that need to communicate directly with the Wii Remote may not work.

-Trigger axis split, renders the last two versions of the driver unusable for GTA V.

-Incompatible with the Toshiba Bluetooth Stack

-Driver Signature Verification

Other issues:
-Sometimes the WiiMote will not work properly with JoyToKey. A simple fix to this is to click Options at the top, then Configure. Click Advanced Setting for Each Device at the top, and move around the Joystick or press a few buttons, then close it an everything should work properly.

 

Preset Configurations:

Mouse.cfg (Uses Nunchuck as mouse. Feel free to edit both of these however you wish.)

Portal.cfg (Raise sensitivity in-game. By default it will be very slow so you can get around menus, etc. better.)

 

Need any other help, or have suggestions? Just post it below!

I'm planning on making a video (and adding helpful images) showing this off (as well as a walkthrough) in the future.

 

 

 

[ThinkWithPortals]

Cool!

 

...but why?

[Overkilled]

interesting but not many people still have wii its nearly a decade old

[MrIceCremeLollipop]

Sick!

[BingoFishy]

16 minutes ago, Overkilled said:

interesting but not many people still have wii its nearly a decade old

You don't need a Wii. My wii's disc reader is broken, but everything else works fine, including my remotes. All Wii remotes will work.

[kelvindeschutter]

cool going to try this

[Charix]

On 4/28/2016 at 1:17 PM, Overkilled said:

interesting but not many people still have wii its nearly a decade old

I still have one  I wish I had a Wii U tho.

[Aereldor]

This might be interesting. I was one of the few people who actually liked the controller(s) on the Wii, and although I did get to work on my old Mac at some point, I might still try to replace the controls on a few games on my PC- most of all, I think Rocket League might benefit from this.

[BingoFishy]

7 hours ago, Aereldor said:

This might be interesting. I was one of the few people who actually liked the controller(s) on the Wii, and although I did get to work on my old Mac at some point, I might still try to replace the controls on a few games on my PC- most of all, I think Rocket League might benefit from this.

Yeah I was thinking so too. Haven't gotten around to making a profile for it yet though.

[Czeekaj]

A long time ago I saw someone use a Wii mote for Head tracking. Could this be a cheap or alternative for other IR hardware that is aimed at PC market? Or would that require disasembly of the Wii mote? or taping it too the top of my head ? lol I figured the guys who build IR head trackers may be the best way but I couldn't see why you couldn't use a Wii mote for parts potentially if you know what your doing.

[BingoFishy]

10 hours ago, Czeekaj said:

A long time ago I saw someone use a Wii mote for Head tracking. Could this be a cheap or alternative for other IR hardware that is aimed at PC market? Or would that require disasembly of the Wii mote? or taping it too the top of my head ? lol I figured the guys who build IR head trackers may be the best way but I couldn't see why you couldn't use a Wii mote for parts potentially if you know what your doing.

You could! My method doesn't utilize the IR remote or the gyroscope - just the controller and its bluetooth function. But it's possible to use it as a gyroscopic mouse, with an IR bar.

[Mr. Swag]

When I did it the gyroscope was reading far left the entire time on joy to key. It would move up and down but otherwise it was useless other than for button presses. I didn’t put in the nunchuck is that a problem?

[fpo]

Finally I can be mr homeless